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i have so many diaspora thoughts about the unbelievably powerful and kind way the orcs are depicted in cr4 but i think it goes without saying that the multilayered ethnic experiences being brought to the table really come alive in a way that is really the beating heart of the themes of araman. brennan is bringing a lot of irish diaspora thoughts to the table (the entire wake sequence was extremely irish) and i think in equal measure aabria is bringing a lot of black diaspora angles as well (aabria has talked about how hal and thaisha's conflict over the theater is VERY analogous to modern discussions about surviving plantations and other monuments to black suffering which is very VERY necessary subtext for analysis), and as we see more of orc culture i am very excited to see how both of those perspectives continue to interconnect and branch out.
i think the reason that a lot of diaspora minoritized folk like myself are drawn to orcs in general is because the orc as the social construct is the greatest macrocosm of how barbarism justifies violence against minorities. the orc in fantasy is something inherently evil, uncivilized, tribal, warlike and stupid, and the mechanics of fantasy ttrpgs encode this racial messaging into hard mechanics and make racist ideology mechanical and biological reality. And something that I think that a lot of progressive game masters have always struggled with, even in critical role's first campaign setting, is trying to reconcile the inherent racist text of what orcs represent while also toeing around that inherently unfair mechanical reality that's been enforced over decades of orc tribes being racist shorthand for fodder your good-aligned party is allowed to kill.
and if you're an ethnic minority anywhere, you know this narrative very intimately, because it's the same textbook being used to justify your suffering, day in and day out. and if you're a brown person at a dnd table, especially surrounded by white people, you feel it constantly. if you don't have friends that are willing to listen to you, you have to sit there with the constant reminder that while they accept you, and while they might accept the half-orc you play, the full orcs and the goblins and the kobolds are allowed to get killed without question. because they're savages, and it wasn't like they were up to any good anyways, right? it's escapist fantasy for all the white people at the table, and the only way you can escape with them is to leave your identity, the way you were raised, and the people you love at the door, and pretend you're nothing like them.
i think a lot of misguided attempts to humanize orcs make them goofy and noble, ultimately reinforcing that implied reality that orcs are still ultimately tribal and stupid compared to other fantasy species, just not worthy of death because of it. to the white liberal writer and audience, this is generally enough, and i think is where we get stuff in the vein of "humans are space orcs" and such. but, the underlying subtext is still that orcs are the best at being brutes, lovably stupid, best in slot to become a barbarian and probably not worth dedicating the stats to pursuing magic. they are still simpler and lesser than their peers.
but I think what REALLY gives araman's depiction of orcs a lot of teeth is that they don't just stop at making orcs noble, or just like humans, and don't try to paint over the narrative that has haunted what orcs represent to the average tabletop player's fantasy of justified, senseless violence against a mindless foe. instead of trying to soften this reality, araman's worldbuilding really interrogates it. it takes the oldest story that justifies why the orcs are mindless savages that are safe to kill, the tale of the evil god-king who forces them to mindlessly do their bidding, and then asks why you accept the reality that god presented, then asks who benefits from that reality, then answers with why they had to lead the path to saving themselves and those around them. and in doing so, orcs arrive in the present with an extremely rich and complicated culture that arises out of this kind of survival, a survival that is not useful to new powers that be like the candescent creed.
i really like that not a single player character is a barbarian in this context, but ESPECIALLY our two orc main characters. hal is a well educated bard and playwright. thaisha is a potent and formidable druid, in a world where the cycle of life and death is a study and not the fancy of noble savages. and more crucially, they're not conditionally allowed into the party as half orcs, they are driving forces of their communities as extremely intelligent (and messy!) full orcs, and look it says a lot about how low the bar is in dnd spaces for that to feel like a big deal but it is!
the way orcs are being handled here is very nuanced and very delicate in a way that is so, SO important, and i really really hope it starts a trend in these tabletop spaces to fully interrogate where their subtext is coming from and create richer, more interesting worlds that are actually inclusive to players of color.
How yall feel bout werewolves
Audio: Windows USB connect and disconnect sounds
dead wife flashback whenever a random nicki minaj lyric pops into my head
at some point during high school i drew a centaur girl with large breasts because i wanted to draw a character that looked like me, and my biofamily got real upset about it. "why are they so large" because mine are that large. "wouldn't that make it hard for her to run" interesting that you think that but keep trying to make me run. "don't draw things like this, it's morally bad" ok i and my apparently inherently pornographic body will just be over here trying to avoid being looked at
this is not to say porn is bad, tbc. i just wasn't a fan as a teenager of being treated like it was impossible to look at bodies like mine non-sexually. frankly i'm not a fan of it now either lmao. i keep kind of thinking about how so many female protagonists are canonically flat or small-chested girls/women who textually wish they had larger breasts, but i can't remember the last time i encountered a protagonist with large breasts where that fact wasn't meant to be sexual. what is up with that dynamic and how do i destroy it
it's like... in order to be accepted as a woman, the character has to desire the idealized form of The Perfect Woman (or if she's a #feminist, reject and detest that same idealized form, but the focus on it is often still there). but in order to be a non-pornographic protagonist, she can't attain it. the moment you have a large enough chest you don't really get to be a normal character anymore, you have to go to sex world. idk. probably someone better read than me has written some sort of papers on this. idk what search terms to use though
the way ozempic has finally made the fact that eating healthy and exercising doesn't necessarily make you thin well known and society's reaction to this is not "oh i guess being thin or fat doesn't actually show if you're healthy" but "oh i guess everyone should be on this drug"
I hate that this is infact how ozempic is viewed now because I watched, in real time, how my mothers diabetes got significantly better on ozempic, she didn't start it for weight loss, infact she started it before it even got big for weight loss, but all people can talk about is the weight loss on ozempic and not how good it is as a diabetes medication. Watching my mom find energy and happiness because for once a drug wasn't making her lethargic and miserable was wonderful, she was able to feel better, but then it was spouted as this miracle weight loss drug, and suddenly she just couldn't access it anymore at a good price. Not only has the ozempidemic made fatphobia normal in an already fatphobic society but it's making it harder to access for people who genuinely need it because it's seen as a luxury cosmetic drug.
Alicia Austin, “Science Fiction Review”, #39, Aug. 1970 Source
Me, tears streaming down my face, sobbing, as I stare at the stars: it’s just so beautiful
The medieval peasant I went back in time to give a bag of Doritos to, concerned: what terrible and powerful sorcerers they must have in your age, to be able to veil the vault of heaven itself from view, as you say
Me, sniffling: I didn’t realize, I can’t, it’s so much, I, I… are the chips good, at least?
Medieval peasant, trying to make me feel better: they’re… magical, strange traveler
As a young adult, I used to think what messed me up as a kid was having completely unfiltered access to things I wasn’t ready for, like NSFW content, gore, heavy discourse, and the existence of predatory adults online. But now that I’m older, I see it differently.
The problem wasn’t what I had access to. It was that I didn’t have access to a safe adult I could actually talk to; someone I could trust to help me without immediately cutting me off from everything and everyone. I remember getting messages from strangers on Skype. I didn’t even respond. But when my parents found out, they banned me from using it entirely. That meant losing most of my contact with friends outside of school. So what did I do? I went behind their backs. And once I was hiding, I couldn’t tell them when something actually dangerous was happening, like when I started being groomed. By the time things escalated, I was already alone with it.
I think about an episode of Scared Straight where a girl was dragged through a prison because she’d been talking to adult men online. She wasn’t doing that because she was reckless or malicious; she was lonely. Her parents weren’t present, she was being bullied at school, and these men gave her attention, told her she was pretty, told her she mattered. She was already being harmed. And the adults in her life responded by terrorizing her. Humiliating her. Calling her a slut. Telling her she deserved it. Breaking her to pieces.
What lesson does that actually teach? Not “this is dangerous, come to us.” It teaches: If you get hurt, we will hurt you more. Do you really think that makes her stop, or does it just make the predators look safer by comparison? They might as well have driven her straight into the jaws of those predators with torches and pitchforks. Because when every path back to safety is lined with punishment, kids don’t run away from danger. They run deeper into it.
If you want kids to be safe, stop treating them like problems to control and start treating them like people worth protecting. Stop ripping away their autonomy the second they make a mistake or encounter something risky. Stop teaching them that honesty will cost them everything.
Be the person they can come to without fear of losing their entire world. Because safety isn’t built through control, it’s built through trust. And if you aren’t safe for them to tell the truth to, then you aren’t keeping them safe at all.
we need to invent a way to explain how deep running and pervasive and subliminal racism and antiblackness is without immediately sounding like an insane conspiracy theorist
female characters are always lighter than male characters. strong characters are almost always dark. aggressive characters are almost always dark. peaceful and intelligent characters are almost always light. even amongst darker characters the lightest one is usually either the leader or the girls. dark is evil and light is good.
if you try to explain this to a white person they look at you like youre insane
briefly pursuing a career in animation radicalized me on this. So many stories from the industry about how you have to start with your character design as dark as possible, because INEVITABLY you'll get "notes" from higher-ups asking you to make them lighter.
In a class about making a pitch bible my teacher once role-played as a shitty executive with a classmate, pressing them in intentionally abrasive ways about why they made their characters diverse. He emphasized that we had to learn to defend these things, because the racism in the industry is extremely deliberate.
Ronald Wimberly's comic essay, Lighten Up, stays evergreen
Hiroyuki Ozaki Informationalized 1998 (x)
Siren by Yoshitaka Amano
Made a little something on slur reclamation.
And there it is, yeah.
just being myshellf! #turtle